Flying to Africa: Monday 4 June 2012

Monday 4 June 2012, 5pm EST, 11pm Botswana time With this post, I begin a chronicle of yet another adventure:

For the next two months, I will be living in Maun, Botswana near the heart of the notorious Okavango Delta (the largest inland delta in the world). In Maun I will be helping Sara in the Village of Hope, which is a community day care for HIV positive children and children who have lost their parents to AIDs. My mother has packed me with some of the most amazing craft projects to tickle the children’s imagination and my father has packed me with insect collecting equipment to make a small collection for the school. Hopefully, I can document all the fantastic crafts and creatures the little kids will be making.

I am writing now from somewhere over the vast Atlantic ocean, 6 hours into the 15 hour non-stop flight from NYC to Johannesburg, South Africa. The anticipation to be on the second largest continent in the world is mounting and the pulse of adventure is ramping up, as the reality of home is slowly drifting away. Slowly, the little yellow line showing the plane’s progression gets longer and longer.

For the first time in my travel experience, I have absolutely no idea what to expect. Botswana is beyond any land that I have imagined. It is apparently one of the most stable nations on the continent and one of the most wealthy. It is also estimated that 24% of Botswana’s people are infected with HIV. Maun itself is in malaria territory and the launch pad for safaris into some of the best game reserves and parks on the continent.